With Sydney and pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim it has been a long time between drinks – 48 yearssince the 1970 Beethoven bicentennial when he visited with cellist Jacqueline du Pre – but that did nothing to lessen the impact of his three concerts with the magnificently distinctive Berlin Staatskapelle in November, including a complete cycle of the four Brahms symphonies.

Barenboim's spontaneous Brahms contrasted with Ricardo Muti's undeviating magisterial performance of the composer's Second Symphony with the Australian World Orchestra earlier in the year. But hearing the Staatskapelle's transparently lucent colours and intimate expressiveness in realising Barenboim's singular and powerful musical conception was one of those landmark events that shape musical culture in unpredictable ways.

A few weeks earlier David Robertson and the SSO had also yielded to the travel bug and fled to Vienna after a strongly shaped performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony and a golden rendition by Renaud Capuçon of the violin concerto by the incurably romantic Viennese refugee Eric Korngold. The SSO's year had also commenced in Vienna with a memorable Mozart series including the last three symphonies under Robertson and a generous serving of concertos with pianist Emanuel Ax. The orchestra's affinity with Mahler was reinforced with a mid-year performance of the Symphony No. 6 under Simone Young.

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Nicole Car owned the stage in La Traviata.Credit:Prudence Upton

The year's major operatic event was Brett Dean's Hamlet at the Adelaide Festival swirling with nebulous wisps and deep subconscious resonance in a production by Neil Armfield that brought Shakespeare's inner theatre memorably to the operatic stage.

Were it not for this significant milestone, Barry Kosky's brilliantly absurdist production of Shostakovich's The Nose for Opera Australia would have been the year's standout in innovation.

In more traditional operatic fare, Nicole Car owned the stage as Violetta in Elijah Moshinsky's 1994 production of La Traviata and Jessica Pratt soared with unfettered fluidity in John Doyle's cloudy geometric production of Donzetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

For me the year's major chamber music event was the Australian Chamber Orchestra's intriguing exploration of chamber arrangements of Mozart and Strauss's Metamorphosen, while the Borodin Quartet's keenly anticipated tour playing Shostakovich proved excessively dour. The ACO also blossomed in its vivid all-Beethoven program at year end with a persuasive performance of the Violin Concerto by Richard Tognetti.

Looking forward

It will be intriguing to watch the intersection of William Kentridge's spidery enigmatic hand-drawn animations and Alban Berg's masterpiece of modern alienation, Wozzeck for Opera Australia in January. Opera Australia will present another fusion of opera and the visual arts with Elena Kats-Chernin's new opera, Whiteley in July.

Those who missed the Song Company's superb exploration of Tudor polyphony, Byrd Round Table earlier this year, can sample their luminous approach to this music in a presentation of music from the Eton Choirbook in the Utzon Room in February.

Similarly, Pinchgut Opera's stylish, musically serene production of Hasse's Artaserse​ this year will whet the appetite for their return to Monteverdi in June, this time with that composer's final opera The Return of Ulysses.

Musica Viva's program for 2019 includes a welcome return of the Emerson Quartet who have not been in Sydney since their Bicentennial tour.

The SSO will feature some notable pianists, including Kirill Gerstein, Behzod Abduraimov and Lang Lang and will continue their presentation of concert performances of opera with Britten's Peter Grimes.